Mansfield believed that “every Member ought to be equal in fact, no less than in theory.” As majority leader, Mansfield supported “Great Society” domestic policies, but questioned America’s role in Vietnam. An expert on Southeast Asia, he advised Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon to end the war. Victory, he counseled, was unlikely.

Dirksen’s keen knowledge of legislation and his willingness to forge bipartisan alliances made him a powerful—and memorable—minority leader. In 1964, this influential debater declared that racial integration was “an idea whose time has come.” A Republican, Dirksen joined liberal Democrats to end the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act.

In 1964, Senator Margaret Chase Smith declared her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. The senator from Maine was the first woman to actively seek the nomination of a major political party.

Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Behring Center

Smith was the first woman elected to both houses of Congress. In the Senate, she issued a “Declaration of Conscience” against the strategies of Joseph McCarthy. Although her remarks did not specifically name Senator McCarthy, she clearly targeted his tactics of intimidation. In retaliation, McCarthy tried to engineer her defeat for reelection. Smith survived, and in 1954 voted to censure McCarthy.

The United States Constitution provides for the election of the president and vice president by an electoral college. Electors cast ballots on the basis of the popular vote in each state. Certificates that attest to each state’s balloting are brought from the Senate to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber for counting by the vice president. This mahogany box held the certificates for the official tally on January 6, 1969, that confirmed the election of Richard Nixon as president.